Gringo view: the workings of the laws of nature and of man

(Opinion) It’s a story of four children, obeying the immutable laws of the jungle and an ex-President of the U.S. defying the laws of man.

The rescue of four courageous children after 40 days alone in the Amazon jungle is more than just a heart-warming saga.

It speaks volumes to the hereditary discipline and jungle law of the Huitoto people, an indigenous group who reside in the Amazon rainforest, primarily in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil.

These indigenous children are naturally familiar with the rainforest. It is their home and the strict adherence to its laws is taught to them from a very early age. It must become second nature.

An indigenous expert told the BBC: “The real story lay in their spiritual connection with nature. The jungle is not only green, but there are ancient energies with which the populations relate, learn, and help each other.”

Leandro, my Amazonian Indian friend, the son of Macux tribal chief, told me: “We learned how much we are a part of nature. We learned that though we hunted and killed animals and fished and took plants from nature, we must never take more than we needed to survive. That`s not natural and we must pay a terrible price for these things.”

The children lived, said a rescuer, because their grandmother, a widely respected indigenous elder, had taught them how to fish, hunt and find safe food in the wild.

The eldest, a girl, Lesly Mucutuy, 13 was praised for her knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

After her mother’s death four days after the crash, she led her siblings, including a baby less than a year old, through the whole ordeal. She is credited for ensuring the survival of the group.

It was she who built makeshift shelters from branches held together with her hair ties and had the sense and composure to take out of the wreckage of the plane, farina, a cassava flour eaten in the Amazon region which nourished them all for days.

And when the farina had run out, they began to eat the fruit from the avichure tree, also known as milk tree, which is rich in sugar and its seeds can be chewed like chewing gum.

Their courage, discipline, and their strict adherence to the laws of the jungle saved their lives.

The Columbian Defense Minister, Iván Velásquez who supervised the rescue operation and was at the hospital to see the children, praised Lesly and said: “It was because of her that the three little siblings were able to survive by her side, with her care, with her knowledge of the jungle.”

The children were rescued as a result of a major effort of 150 Columbian soldiers joined promisingly by numerous indigenous volunteers, an unusually positive example of the often-difficult relations between the military and the indigenous communities.

By contrast to the story of the children and their adherence to the laws of the jungle, the indictment of Donald J Trump, the former U.S. president on federal charges of mishandling classified documents is a singular display of lack of any discipline and honesty.

It is a tawdry example of what actually happens when the laws are ignored.

That everyone is equal under the law is the foundational principle of democracy. Admittedly the laws of man are far more complicated than the laws of nature.

The indictment of the ex-president and leading republican candidate for the presidency in the 2024 election is set to provide a serious test of the principle of equality under the law.

If the stunning list of charges in the 49-page indictment document can be weighed by a jury of his peers and they can produce a guilty or innocent verdict, we will have seen an example of our justice system at work, a system far more malleable than the laws of the jungle that kept the Columbian children alive.

Trump and most of his cohorts have attacked the rule of law and loudly proclaimed that the laws have been weaponized against him.

And he has framed his indictment as more than an attack on him, but rather, an attack on all of his followers.

“In the end, they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way,” Mr. Trump said at a political rally in Greensboro, N.C. “The baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of In-Justice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country.”

Trump has never lacked superlatives. He acts as if laws don’t apply to him. It would be hard to argue that he is prepared to accept that everyone is equal under the law, even ex-presidents.

He wants everyone to believe that it will be impossible for him to get a fair trial.
One wonders how long he would last in the jungle.

If we violate the laws of nature, life hangs in the balance. Adherence to them saved the lives of the Amazonian children.

In our modern world, if we violate the laws of our government, there must be serious penalties but from the noise emanating from the Trump camp, not everyone believes that.

We saw how it played out for the children. Now, we’ll have to see how it will play out for Trump.